Think back to your childhood bedroom. Can you picture it? I can see mine. There was a bunk bed with the bottom bunk turned perpendicular and a little bookshelf with a lamp on top tucked in underneath next to where I rested my head. It was like a little cave full of stories. Many of my stories started the same as yours, I’m sure: “Once upon a time, in a land far, far away…”
Now think back to some old classroom, an English class you took somewhere along the way. You’re sitting in a desk next to so many forgotten faces. The teacher is at the front, with the well-worn blackboard in the background. Perhaps for a moment, the reader’s voice cuts through your daydreaming to deliver some famous words: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”
And, now look around this place. Plant it in your mind resiliently alongside your first bedroom, your old classroom. In the future, you will think back to this room, with its familiar dimensions, familiar wall-hangings, familiar stained-glass window. Sense its air that hangs heavy with a silence thick until we fill it with music and scripture. You will think back to this place and remember these words: “In the night in which He was betrayed…”
Three opening lines. Once upon a time; it was the best of times, it was the worst of times; and in the night in which He was betrayed.
Let us assume for now that all three of these lines are openings for love stories, since all truly great stories are in one way or another about love. So, we must wonder what stories might these openings introduce to us?
Well, we know what we get with “Once upon a time.” That sort of opening must introduce us to some fairytale romance. Stories that begin with “Once upon a time” must, after all, end with “Happily ever after.”
But what do you make of a love story that begins with “In the night in which He was betrayed”?
As opening lines go, this has to be one of the all-time greats. Dickens, Hemingway, Austen—they’re all eating their hearts out. This line is loaded with mystery, honesty, and one shiny $5 word—Betrayed.
The whole sentence leads up to that heavy word, “Betrayed.” Does that tell us that this whole story will be about betrayal? In a word, “No.”
Tonight, we gather for a Maundy Thursday worship, sometimes called the Celebration of the Feast, sometimes called Covenant Thursday. It is the day on which Christ and His disciples gathered for their last meal together; it is the day that Christ makes the promise of a new covenant in His blood; and it is the night that Christ is taken by Judas and the guards.
Except, that’s not exactly how the story goes in John’s Gospel account. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke this is the night of the feast. This is where Jesus blesses the bread and the wine and promises forgiveness of sins to all who take that Supper. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke that meal is the last big show before Jesus is arrested.
But, in John, a different ceremony takes that pride of place. Instead of a last meal, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet and tells them to love as He loves. So, what does this significant switch tell us about the story we’ve gathered to hear tonight? It tells us something about the way that God loves us through Jesus, and the way God calls us to love others in that same way.
To understand that love, we must ask, “Who can betray us?” Not our enemies, not a stranger. Only our loved ones can betray us, because only our loved ones hold our trust in their hands.
And so, hours before He is betrayed and arrested, Jesus washes the feet of all those whom He loved (including Judas who would betray him). That is how God loves—recklessly, foolishly, openly. Jesus doesn’t protect himself, doesn’t guard His heart. Jesus doesn’t love only those who He is sure will love Him back. God’s love is a humble love that lays itself at the feet of the world.
And, that’s the trouble with love. It has the power to conquer death and bring a sinful creation into God’s new kingdom, but it must first swallow all pride and serve, serve, serve. God calls us to wash the feet of the Judases among us; in fact, God’s love story is precisely for the Judases who betray Him, the Peters who deny Him, and the Thomases who doubt Him.
On Maundy Thursday, we cannot worry about the end of the story. Ours is an immediate call to action, not an invitation to wait and see. Even if the world should end tomorrow, we are called to plant a tree today. Even if our neighbors might reject us in the evening, we are called to serve them in the morning.
Perhaps the next time we hear the pastor begin that great story of bread, wine, and forgiveness, we might understand it a little differently.
In the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus knelt, and washed His disciples’ feet, saying “Do this and love one another.”
Intern Mark Dixon